This is another issue. It is not like being a baby again, babies grow, babies learn and watch the world around them, this is losing someone to a painful disease that makes you helpless and not oblivious. I have worked in many long term care facilities; and I took care of my own mother for 6+ years at home (while working) and my mother suffered---she became panicked by her lost skills, then anxious, she hallucinated, was paranoid, wandered, was angry at times and unable to express pain (eg when arm broken in fall) and had to have me bathe her. She would not have wanted to be alive like that, she had no choice, her body kept going. And she remembered things she had tried to forget since childhood although she no longer knew who I was ----she had been an intelligent, well educated, active woman who prided herself on her attention to detail and creativity---she lost her friends, her home, her self...
It was heartbreaking. And, in a facility, you are totally at the mercy of care from people who may be worked to the bone themselves..your skin may break down, nurses will shovel meds into your mouth, aides food, you may not really want it but....
or be misused and unable to speak up. You don't get to the bathroom on time unless you can walk or you are able to get the help you need. Diapers need to checked and changed every two hours, people touch you, move you, even as you resist. There is pain in the end if something else doesn't kill you---and it is incredibly sad for loved ones who are no longer known. Being demented, losing memory and physical abilities, is not not being in some clueless happy/forgetful land. It hurts. It loves. It cares. It cannot express, eventually cannot eat or move...
sorry so rambling. can't help myself and no reflection on you.
There can also be beautiful times still, small joys and pleasures, my mom loved to walk and walk we did, she loved a present, the cat in her lap. For years, when she could no longer read, she carried a book in her hand.
She did clearly avoid activities that reminded her of her own lost abilities (she was an artist--NO craft groups for her, no painting for fun, no museums...she was a cook, the kitchen became a place that didn't exist...a gardener who suddenly couldn't respond to flowers with a smile.)